Forget everything you know about Amber Rose. Yep, forget all the articles dissecting what kind of a person she is just because she posted photos of herself in skimpy bikinis (you guys, that’s not exactly news!) or dated Kanye West. It’s easy to get caught up in media hype, especially when it comes to bashing a beautiful woman who chooses to embrace her body and flaunt it. That’s been happening for eons.

But a couple of recent interviews have made us seriously re-think our (imaginary, but hopefully one day real) relationship with Amber Rose. Admittedly, we didn’t pay too much attention yet believed the words of many others who continued to share opinions and comments about her literally based on what she looked like. Amber, we should’ve known better and we’re willing to admit our mistake.

The first time we started to recognize there was “more than meets the eye” to Amber, was when she started popping up in comedian Amy Schumer’s videos. Noted feminist and badass challenger of the way women are portrayed in the media and society, we figured there was something Amy knew that we also needed to know about when it came to madam Rose.

Talking to Cosmopolitan about her new book ‘How To Be A Bad Bitch‘ Amber says there came a point amidst all the social media attention and twitter battles where she realized it was incredibly lame and needed to stop caring about other people’s opinions of her so much.

“I think the turning point was when I just stopped giving a fuck about what people say. One day, I just woke up and I was like, ‘You know what? I can’t sit around and stress anymore about the Internet and what people say about me. I just gotta do me’,” she said.

In response to the incessant slut-shaming she has received over the years, in March she organized her own Slutwalk, based on the protest of the same name originating in Toronto in 2011 after a police officer publicly declared women should stop dressing like sluts if they don’t want to be sexually assaulted. FYI, in most countries where rape and sexual assault is a crime, dressing a certain way isn’t a valid excuse in any way.

Her relationship with feminism has been strengthened because of the way she has been treated online.

“I was always about girl power, but I didn’t quite get it because I did always feel like I had to be completely submissive to a man. I was always very unhappy doing that. I think I needed time to grow up. You get to a certain point in your life where you really find out who you are, and sometimes that happens when you’re 25, but for me, it was 31. I didn’t quite know that before. I guess social media did help create the feminist monster that I’ve become,” she explained.

In an interview with Larry King, Amber expands on the reasons she calls herself a feminist after Larry asks her why she is suddenly speaking out about it.

“Because I feel like it’s mostly women that give other women a hard time so it’s important for women like myself to put that out there and let other women know that it’s okay to embrace other women’s beauty and sexuality,” she said.

She says although she felt her feminist rumblings a long time ago, it was her bigger platform more recently that helped her decide to speak out.

“I feel like now I have a voice to make a difference,” she adds.

Amber reveals she has always been beautiful (duh!) and with that meant girls have been accusing her of being a slut which affected her when she was younger.

“There was a lot of times when I was younger I would dress like a boy. I would cover up because I developed very young and I didn’t want guys to look at me. Because I wanted them to like me for my personality and I just wanted to make friends. But then I got older and I got to the point where I was like, ‘It’s okay. It’s okay to be a sexual being, it’s okay to be feminine and beautiful and still have a great personality and that can shine through also,” she said.

If feminism is to be inclusive and represent a diverse range of women and men, we need voices like Amber’s who give permission to girls to accept their body and not feel like they need to cover up to be acceptable. We’re so conditioned to think a feminist has to look one certain way, and that to be a viable woman in society means hating our bodies. It’s time to break free of the restrictive labels placed upon us and set a new course for what it means to be a woman starting today.